Stop Buying Sour Cream. Make Sour Cream Instead

Sour cream is an easy condiment to make at home. In fact, the hands-on time is less than 5 minutes and the rewards are a rich, creamy probiotic rich condiment that’s perfect for topping baked potatoes or using as the base for a dip or sauce. It’s so easy to make sour cream at home that I’m surprised anyone would still be buying it in the store.

You can make sour cream at room temperature on the kitchen counter, but a better tasting and more active culture will result from fermenting it overnight in a warm environment. This encourages the proliferation of both mesophilic and thermophilic lacto-bacteria, giving you more probiotics and more complex flavor for the same effort.

Here’s the easy way using the equipment you already have. You don’t need any special equipment with this method of making sour cream at home. I use my electric oven, with the light bulb turned on to get just the right temperature to actively ferment the cream.

How to Make Probiotic Sour Cream at Home

Description

Use this as you would store-bought sour cream on baked potatoes, in stroganoff, as an accompaniment to potato pancakes, as a base for dips or sauces. Once you’ve tasted active, probiotic-rich, creamy homemade sour cream, you’ll never enjoy the commercial product again

Instructions

Step 1: Clean and sanitize both the jar, the lid, and any utensils that will come in contact with the cream.

Step 2: Pour the cream into the sanitized jar. Using a sanitized spoon, stir in ½ teaspoon of the powdered mesophilic culture or 2 tablespoons of the active cultured buttermilk, and 2 tablespoons of yogurt OR omit the mesophilic culture and yogurt and just add 2 tablespoons of kefir. Stir well. Put the lid on the jar.

Step 3: Create a warm environment to culture the sour cream, as you would if you were culturing yogurt. I place a 2-quart glass measuring cup in the oven and put about 1 liter of hot tap water into it. Place the covered jar in this and put it in the oven on the middle rack. Turn the oven light on and close the door. The oven maintains a temperature around 95 to 115 F which is ideal for dairy ferments.

Step 4: Leave the sour cream to ferment overnight – 8 to 12 hours. As it ferments it will thicken and the flavor will improve.

Step 5: Refrigerate the finished sour cream.

Notes

You can make sour cream at room temperature on the kitchen counter, but a better tasting and more active culture will result from fermenting it overnight in a warm environment. This encourages the proliferation of both mesophilic and thermophilic lacto-bacteria, giving you more probiotics and more complex flavor for the same effort.

Step by step directions for homemade probiotic sour cream

Yield: 2 cups

Step 1: Clean and sanitize both the jar, the lid, and any utensils that will come in contact with the cream.

Step 2: Pour the cream into the sanitized jar. Using a sanitized spoon, stir in ½ teaspoon of the powdered mesophilic culture or 2 tablespoons of the active cultured buttermilk, and 2 tablespoons of yogurt OR omit the mesophilic culture and yogurt and just add 2 tablespoons of kefir. (See the explanation below). Stir well. Put the lid on the jar.

Step 3: Create a warm environment to culture the sour cream, as you would if you were culturing yogurt. I place a 2-quart glass measuring cup in the oven and put about 1 liter of hot tap water into it. Place the covered jar in this and put it in the oven on the middle rack. Turn the oven light on and close the door. The oven maintains a temperature around 95 to 115 F which is ideal for dairy ferments.

Step 4: Leave the sour cream to ferment overnight – 8 to 12 hours. As it ferments it will thicken and the flavor will improve.

Step 5: Refrigerate the finished sour cream.

Use this as you would store-bought sour cream on baked potatoes, in stroganoff, as an accompaniment to potato pancakes, as a base for dips or sauces. Once you’ve tasted active, probiotic-rich, creamy homemade sour cream, you’ll never enjoy the commercial product again.

These are the most common bacteria found in commercial cheese making and yogurt making cultures. Mesophilic bacteria reproduce at room temperature around 70 to 78F, while thermophilic bacteria reproduce at temperatures between 105 and 110F. In order for both cultures to reproduce well in your sour cream culture, you need to maintain the temperature in the 100 to 110 range so that both cultures can actively populate your cream. Using both cultures gives your cultured sour cream a more complex flavor.

If that seems too complicated and you have access to kefir with active lacto-bacteria in it feel free to use that instead. Kefir contains both mesophilic and thermophilic lacto-bacteria. If you are using kefir you do not need yogurt, buttermilk, or mesophilic cultures.

Sour cream

For more posts on home dairy techniques check out these from the archives:

Thank you for this recipe I plan on trying it today. Could I use kefir whey or kefir instead ? I will use the cream, and I have kefir and I have home made yogurt and whey from the kefir, do you think this will work?